The Musée de Quai Branly, which opened in June 2006, houses France’s national collection of primitive art. The statistics are impressive: 3,500 objects are displayed in the 4,750 m2 (50,825 sq.ft) permanent exhibition gallery. The gallery lies in 17,500 m2 of landscaped gardens on the bank of the Seine close to the Eiffel Tower and cost €232m to build.

The ten year design process was marked by a lively debate between the scientific community, which wanted the objects to be displayed for academic study: uniform lighting and comprehensive labelling, and those who wanted to present the public with a more dramatic and entertaining experience.
The dramatists won and the result is architect Jean Nouvel’s mysterious, dark, cave-like design. The visito r is led down curving leather-clad passages to discover striking displays of tribal masks, religious statues, ceremonial robes, weapons, and totem poles.

While some objects are behind glass and lit with fibre optics, 1,300 are free-standing and need to be lit conventionally. The items are of varying sensitivity to light and, while some are ebony and need a powerful source, others are white and need less light. To add to the complexity, the projectors were to be installed above a ceiling of black expanded metal mesh and would be impossible to adjust and dim by hand.

French lighting designer George Berne selected Director DR2 projectors from UK-based Remote Controlled Lighting Ltd (RCL) for this demanding task. RCL had already supplied lights to a number of major institutions including The British Museum, The Technisches Museum in Vienna and The Algerian Cultural Centre in Paris. The DR2 can be aimed and dimmed using a simple hand-held controller and costs only 50% more than a manually adjusted light.

The public response has vindicated Nouvel’s design philosophy: the museum recorded 150,000 visitors in the first month.